Is overpopulation really the cause of famines like those in Somalia?

The recent birth of David and Victoria Beckham’s baby daughter, Harper Seven, is good news according to Dr. Dermot Grenham, a population expert who holds a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Oxford and a specialist masters degree in population and development from the London School of Economics

Arguments from authority are very weak indeed, but when the authority is John Lennon, what the heck.

I have heard it parroted for as long as I can’t remember that
Nigeria’s hyperpopulation is one of the reasons the country is failing.
And from the first time I heard this flawed reasoning I have always
countered it, even when my views had not even been mellowed with data,
statistics and considerable knowledge of political economy. The problem
with the notion of high population is not so much that it is erroneous
as that it might give Nigeria’s misrulers something to blame for their
slimy utter badness

Norman Borlaug should have been an American hero for his work in preventing the population bomb from exploding, but his name is still barely known in the United States.

Forty years after the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s influential book The Population Bomb, a new scholarly, peer-reviewed magazine, the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development,
thinks that it is time to take stock. And in a fascinating series of
articles, it contributors demolish Ehrlich’s population pessimism. This
is essential reading – and it is freely available. Here are a few
highlights.

The new US ambassador for global women's issues has assured the UN of the
Obama administration's "deep commitment" to a its blueprint for slowing the
population explosion and empowering women. However, Melanne Verveer highlighted
the importance of educating girls rather than "reproductive rights". The
theory is that educated women choose to have fewer children.

I have been reading Peter Singer’s latest book, The life you can save:
Acting now to end world poverty. Yes, that Peter Singer, the animal
rights philosopher whose ethical system encompasses infanticide and
euthanasia. Much to my surprise, I agree with him!

Sir David Attenborough, the well-known natural history documentary
film-maker, has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust. He
find the growth in human population "frightening".

This is just a bit of fun for lovers of doggerel. Normally we don’t
publish doggerel, or even poetry for that matter, in MercatorNet, but the editor does
not feel bound to follow the rules. This bit of fun was composed a few years ago, after seeing that Chapter 2 of Paul Ehrlich’s 1995 book about the coming crisis of
widespread starvation, The Stork and the Plow, is entitled “The Only
Animal That Practices Birth Control”.

Welcome to Demography Is Destiny. We launched this to counter two media memes: that humans are a cancer which is destroying our planet and that world population is spiralling to unsustainable levels. The real story is that intelligent and inventive human will rise to the challenge of climate change and that our real problem is the coming demographic winter. The editors of Demography is Destiny are Marcus and Shannon Roberts, who live in Auckland, New Zealand. Send them your comments and suggestions.